


Equilibrium

by trimethylxanthine



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Book 3 Canon Divergence, F/F, Mythology References, Rated For Violence, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-05 05:59:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3108650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trimethylxanthine/pseuds/trimethylxanthine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only the Avatar can bring peace and balance to the world — and there is so much more to the world than just the Four Nations.</p><p>
  <i>Korrasami AU wherein Korra never came back after Book 3.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Equilibrium

Asami Sato awoke on top of several important trade agreements with a start.

A summer storm howled steadily on outside. It had been a fitful night, great sheets of rain slashing heavily against the windows. Water sluiced down the slick glass in droves, helping to create fluid shadows that loomed over the CEO of Future Industries as she struggled to gain her bearings. The wavering light of a single lamp illuminated the deluge of documents that was scrambled all over her desk, and the occasional cracks of lightning that filtered in through the window also helped to light up the bowels of her office, etching Asami's prone and hunched figure in sharp relief against the air.

Asami did not remember falling asleep, although it was apparent (according to the clock on her stand, anyway) that it was now a time well after midnight. She looked down at the trade agreement before her, exhausted and jaded: having pored over this particular document so extensively before she had fallen asleep, every little curve of every word had since been scorched deeply in her mind. It was a strange one. Asami had never heard of the company before, some upstart called Svidsgarde — what kind of name that was, she didn't even know — and they were offering Future Industries a contract about _employees,_ out of all things. Or as they put it, "personnel intended for private purposes." Asami's company made machines, not people. It was certainly out of the norm as far as names and requests went, but not the craziest she had ever heard of.

After a few moments of deliberation, she decided that it would be more far detrimental to both herself and the agreement if she continued to work on it than if she closed up shop and called it a night. Asami wearily shuffled the sheaf of papers off to the side and rose unsteadily to her feet. She began to pack up her belongings, all the while casting troubled glances to the tempest that raged outside.

It was the third large summer storm in as many weeks, and some of the more superstitious in Republic City had begun to cry foul about it. They claimed it was a sign of the intruding spirits making their way into the Material Realm, upsetting a balance the first Avatar had apparently created more than ten thousand years ago when he forced the divide between the humans and the spirits by closing the two Spirit Portals. Many a time Asami would be walking on the cobbled streets and end up hearing a variation of the same complaint, all under the cacophony of a mournful rainfall: _"The world has been thrown into imbalance; so much for the Avatar who was supposed to_ sustain _the balance! A dark day it was indeed when the Avatar brought the spirits back into_ our _world. Spirits have no place here and they never will."_

(It was no small wonder, then, that Korra had once expressed dismay at the account of her poll numbers being at eight percent. It seemed that the public _really_ didn't like their Avatar at the moment.)

Of course, Asami believed in spirits as much as the next citizen — why, she was best friends with the woman who was the current incarnation of the Avatar Spirit, and she lived next to a few dragonfly bunny spirits herself — and while she conceded hesitantly to the fact that the storms hitting the city one after the other _was_ rather strange, she didn't put much weight to the fact that it was a supernatural force that was causing them to behave in such an odd manner. There was definitely something off about them, she was certain of that, but the workings of strange storms was nothing but a field that she had zero expertise in; thus, she reserved total judgment on the entire matter. As long as the storms stayed the way they were, menacing yet still something that was able to be easily recovered from, Asami couldn't care less if it rained as such for the next six months.

...Alright, maybe she _would_ care, but only for the reason that it would be utterly depressing to be staring at a thick sheet of gray clouds hanging heavy and pallid over the city day after day, week after week — much less six months. _That_ would most certainly put a damper on the morale of everyone in Republic City, whose denizens (along with complaining about the so-called "spirit storms") were still jumpy after receiving word that Ba Sing Se, and subsequently the entire Earth Kingdom, had fallen into the clutches of anarchy due to the doings of the Red Lotus organization.

Asami still had nightmares about the Red Lotus, sometimes. They did not frequent her dreams often, and for that she was grateful; she thought she might go insane if she had them every night. But when she did dream about them, she always woke up with a quiet gasp, a thin sheen of sweat covering her brow.

She wasn't scared of them, not for _herself_ at least. Because it was not as if they hurt _her_ (not directly at least), but the fact that they had hurt...Korra.

Korra had dominated her thoughts ever since she left Republic City three years ago. Asami's overall last impression of her was one of a woman who was confined to a wheelchair, a stoic expression, and a composed, still figure. Before Korra's fight with Zaheer, Asami had never once seen Korra keep still of her own choosing, even while sitting — she would either be shoving food into her mouth at her place at the dinner table, or gesturing wildly with a wide grin splitting her face as she recounted the events of the day, or hopping around and looking for something to keep her entertained. In short, Korra was not a naturally apathetic person, and it sharply tugged at Asami's concern to see her best friend behave in such a manner.

Asami had volunteered at once to care for the disabled Avatar when the need arose, driven partly by necessity yet mostly because she _wanted_ to. She _wanted_ to help see Korra through and help her make a full recovery. She _wanted_ Korra to return to her old, sanguine self. She _wanted_ to be with...well, Korra.

What she got instead was in fact Korra, but a Korra who was still drowning in pools of liquid silver.

Korra, lying prone and battered upon the rocky ground, cradled in the arms of her father.

Korra, hung over and defeated as she sat crumpled in a wheelchair, the shadows of a thousand sleepless nights hanging heavily beneath her eyes.

Korra, waving from the deck of a ship that would take her back to the Southern Water Tribe, in hopes that she would be able to make a quicker recovery surrounded by the snowy cliffs of her homeland where she could not in the din and clutter of the city.

Korra, gone for three years and missing for four months by now.

To put it succinctly, Asami was worried. _Very_ worried. She had sent a veritable boatload of letters to the Avatar over the length of Korra's sabbatical, and had received only a few battered messages in return. They arrived at intermittent and random intervals, none of them really connected to the last. Rarely, they'd be long essays that rambled on for pages about the driest of all subjects (never did Asami know that Korra could spend two whole paragraphs describing the texture of undercooked sea prunes), as if Korra didn't really know what she wanted to say. More often, they were spastic and irregular and distressingly short, even in script, as if Korra couldn't pull herself together long enough to even string together more than a few coherent sentences.

Asami didn't know which type of letter she preferred to receive, but she supposed in the end that _any_ letter Korra brought herself to write was a good letter, so she immediately devoured each one as they came. She would write back, of course, and send the reply off with haste the next day, but never were they responded to individually.

The last message she had received from Korra was of the relatively short variety.

_Dear Asami,_

_I'm sorry I haven't written to you sooner, but every time I've tried, I never know what to say. The past two years have been the hardest of my life. Even though I can get around fine now, I still can't go into the Avatar State. I keep having visions of Zaheer and what happened that day. Katara thinks a lot of this is in my head, so I've been meditating a lot, but sometimes I worry I'll never recover._

_Please don't tell Mako and Bolin I wrote to you and not them. I don't want to hurt their feelings, but it's easier to tell you about this stuff. I don't think they'd understand._

There was no signature attached, but Asami would have to be blind to think it wasn't from Korra. Korra's handwriting was more steady than that in some of her other letters, but the tone of this one had worried Asami out of all of them. And it was one that rather humbled her: Asami had tried many, many times to get Korra to open up to her about whatever she had been feeling after her battle with Zaheer, when the Avatar was still bound to her wheelchair, and not once had she succeeded. At most, she would be greeted with a blank stare; at worst, Korra would deliberately turn away and keep silent.

While Korra hadn't sent her a letter for months now, it had fortunately been some time since the last dream. When she was in the company of others, Asami made it a point to keep her face calm and stature poised. The tumult of emotions were kept safely locked behind a marble dam, though her expression was more often than not composed of the same stone, carved into a small smile.

That was how she preferred it. That was how it had to be.

Asami had since entered her bedroom, and lost in her thoughts as she was, she only realized it when she had already opened the door. A brush of air gusted past her face when she closed the wooden frame behind her with a soft click. The room was a cavernous space that was more empty than it was filled, and oftentimes Asami found herself wishing for another person to liven up its dreariness. She tossed her bag to one side, her body toward the other, and a downy mattress greeted her back. Asami stayed in her position for a few more moments, simply gazing blankly into nothing.

Without heed, the words slipped out of her mouth.

"Korra," she whispered into the unrelenting darkness, "please come back soon..."

The storm only murmured on outside and took no heed of her prayers, just like they hadn't every other night. Asami listened intently, yet heard nothing but the gloomy whispers of the rain.

 _"Taken,"_ the raindrops murmured, a monotonic drumbeat of a noise that was only second in volume to the loud pounding of her heart. Asami found that she was growing to hate how they sounded.

 _"Lost,"_ the raindrops chortled.

 _"Gone,"_ the raindrops hissed.

 _"She will not come back,"_ they warned, and the thunder growled loudly.

 _"The wait will only grow longer,"_ they said, and lightning smashed across the leaden clouds in agreement.

 _"Perhaps you should seek her out,"_ the entire storm suggested.

"No," she'd said in response. "I don't even know where she is. Korra will do what she must." Asami shook her head as if to clear her mind. She turned into bed, shutting the lights, before she fell into a fitful sleep.

Outside, the rain continued to fall; thunder did not cease to roll; lightning still cracked across the sky, and like clockwork, the night turned into day.


End file.
